Dee Discusses: The X-Files 2.1

I thought this show was good before but holy crap it just got exponentially better. The season premiere of two is fantastic. I was completely engaged. There was some flailing and yelling. I feel at a certain point my gushing about this show is going to get old, but it deserves a lot of credit for this premiere. They have it more together. It’s starting to get into a well oiled machine feeling. They have the characters down, the themes down, and it started out with a good story. The X-Files is closed … now what? I love that this isn’t solved immediately too. Mulder does accomplish something by the end of the episode, but it’s not enough. It’s going to take a lot more than that to get them back on track, and I love it.

Right off they discuss the Voyager project. I did know about the two probes before, in a vague sense, but it was cool that they twisted the information a little to work with this story. The High Resolution Microwave Survey was supposed to seek alien life and try to communicate with it, and the base in Puerto Rico suddenly activates. Does that mean there’s alien life nearby? PROBABLY. The problem is that Mulder and Scully no longer work for the X-Files and they’ve been separated. They’re not even supposed to talk in public, and they have to meet in secret parking lots to discuss things. Scully gets Mulder to meet with her and admits she doesn’t have any actual information, she just wanted to talk to him. She doesn’t think they should sneak around anymore, and she’s worried about him. Scully is back to teaching and Mulder is on wiretap jobs, which is probably a punishment of sorts.

Right up front we get the abduction of Samantha Mulder, and that was the point of the episode I started flailing at. We got the general info about it before, but this shows us exactly what happened, and that was terrifying. No wonder he’s got so much PTSD about it. Mulder is called to some Senator guy who I guess is supportive of him? He did say he had friends in high places. He apologizes for sucking, and the guy says “they” might be listening. He privately tells Mulder that the base was set off and he is sending Mulder there ASAP. He doesn’t know how much time he has left, but this is his chance to get solid proof of alien life. Mulder gets out there and meets the only guy left over, Jorge, who is terrified and says he saw an alien. He helps Mulder figure out the Survey base.

Nice arms, Mulder

Meanwhile Scully’s all WTFFFF because she can’t find Mulder. He keeps leaving her out of things. Smack him across the face, Scully. Since she is a BAMF, she manages to crack his password (trustno1) and the FBI almost catches the papers she prints out that lead her to Mulder. She is also tracked to the airport but she gives them the slip. Back in Puerto Rico, the same sort of energy as a usual alien abduction happens and Jorge gets terrified, running into the jungle. Mulder goes after him and finds him dead, looking as if he died from fright. Mulder’s taping all of this and dedicating it to Scully, which is sweet, but you could’ve just brought her with you idiot. The base rocks again and Mulder gets a reminder of Samantha’s abduction as he sees a glowing figure in the door and passes out.

He wakes up to Scully there, because she’s awesome, and he has tapes of the signal proving aliens exist. He’s understandably psyched about this, except some cov ops team shows up and gives them a chase. They try to shoot them down too, eeeeek. They have only one tape. Mulder meets with Skinner and the Smoking Man who argue with him over going rogue, and Smoking Man is dismissed. He seems pissed about it. I did not know that Skinner outranks him! He doesn’t fire Mulder but warns him, and the X-Files still isn’t reopened. The tape unfortunately is blank so Mulder has no proof. AWWW. You’ll get there, Mulder. Keep fighting the good fight!

Basically, this episode was fantastic. A really solid opening to the season. It’s exciting and interesting. It starts out with a central conflict – how to reopen the X-Files – and we still don’t have any resolution. We see Samantha’s abduction and Mulder gets vindication, when he was starting to doubt himself. Two thumbs up here.